Rory Stewart walks to Westminster

Julian Glover in the Guardian has spent time wandering over the fields of Cumbria with Rory Stewart, the remarkable renaissance guy who is in all likelihood about the enter the Commons in the Conservative interest. You can read the full interview here but here's a typical extract:

"No other Tory MP, it is safe to say, will have spent a month as a 10-year-old living in a Dayak longhouse in ­Borneo, or be able on a whim to mimic a George Steiner lecture at Oxford, or drop into conversation lines such as "when I was beaten up at Bamiyan". None will have walked to Oxford from Marble Arch, as he did in October, leaving London at 4.30am and arriving just after 11pm ("the A40 was boring"). After our dinner together, he asks to borrow a book, "as I only have Seneca".

"It would all be terribly affected, if it was not, apparently, for real. Throw a subject at Stewart – Henry V, for instance – and he pours forth detail and understanding. But in the Black Bull hotel that night a scratch Stewart/Guardian team comes last in the pub quiz. Full marks for geography and ­history, but none for pop music, and neither of us knew who plays Dot ­Cotton in EastEnders."

Mr Stewart is 37 but carries the wisdom and experience of an older man on his slim shoulders. One to one he's captivating. We can expect lots more gushing about him before polling day, much in the way that 18thc salons gushed over exotic creatures from afar. A few months ago I asked him whether he understood what a closed, freedom-sapping place Westminster could be for those used to open spaces and wide horizons. I'm not sure he does, but the Commons certainly needs people like him.